Giada de Laurentiis's Easy Trick for the Best Tomato Sauce

I gotta admit that when I think of something sweet, the first thing that pops into my head isn't carrots. Carrots aren't even the hundredth thing. But after watching Giada De Laurentiis sweeten her tomato sauce with a whole carrot and then dig into a piping-hot bowl of orecchiette with a full-head eye-roll of pleasure … I would put a carrot in my cereal if she told me to.

The theory is that the carrot sweetens tomato sauce just as well as sugar—or better. While there is some debate as to whether this is how all Italians do it, how some regions of Italy do it, or whether tomato sauce needs sweetener in the first place, I wouldn't know about any of that.

I grew up with my mom's flawless spaghetti sauce which definitely featured brown sugar (no wonder I still dream about it). Plus, as a kid, I hated cooked carrots. In no universe would these two foods ever become one. 

Making Tomato Sauce Giada's Way

Until today. As a recipe test, I cooked the sauce portion of Giada's Basic Parmesan Pomodoro, which involves stirring chunky Parmesan rinds and long stems of fresh basil into canned cherry tomatoes, along with a whole carrot. At first, it feels like you've raided the nearest daycare play kitchen for all the plastic "foods" for make-believe "soup." Except almost as soon as that basil hits the heat, there's no doubt you're tapping into some kind of timeless, old-world knowledge.  

First, I quote-unquote sautéed the garlic. Missing the fact that the recipe begins with 1/3 cup of EVOO (not just a tablespoon or two), I promptly fried my helpless garlic cloves into fossils. Like the ancient ruins of Pompeii, but worse.

Round two had much better odds, considering I actually read the recipe. The garlic happily simmered in the pan, while the aroma of "I'm making magic" bloomed from the stovetop. 

Then in went the Parmesan rinds, fresh basil, tomatoes, and my starring carrot. I found Mutti brand baby Roma tomatoes at the store, passionately made in Italy since 1899, which I hoped would make up for the fact that they're less sweet than the canned cherry tomatoes the recipe calls for. They're cute, but this was a sweetness test, after all. 

Stirring frequently and keeping the heat low so the cheese doesn't stick to the pot as you simmer, the carrot becomes your timer. When it's soft enough to eat (which you can test by biting into it like Giada or simply cutting it in half with a wooden spoon), the sauce is done.

Remove the Parm rinds, carrot, and basil. (I skipped the blender and left things chunky.) Whether it was the tomatoes, the carrot, or both, the final result was delicately sweet, herbal, and tomato-y and—unless I'm making my mom's spaghetti sauce (Instant nostalgia requires a tablespoon of brown sugar)—I'd use Giada's carrot trick to sweeten the pot any time.